FI­FA yes­ter­day sus­pend­ed ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers Mo­hamed bin Ham­mam and Jack Warn­er over bribery al­le­ga­tions, while com­plete­ly ex­on­er­at­ing pres­i­dent Sepp Blat­ter in the gravest cor­rup­tion cri­sis fac­ing foot­ball's world gov­ern­ing body. "We are sat­is­fied there is a case to be an­swered," Petrus Damaseb, deputy chair­man of the Ethics Com­mit­tee, told a news con­fer­ence at FI­FA's Swiss head­quar­ters. In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse, Warn­er ac­cused the FI­FA Ethics Com­mit­tee of an "abuse of process" and ac­cused FI­FA pres­i­dent Sepp Blat­ter of mak­ing a gift of US$1 mil­lion to CON­CA­CAF to spend "as it deems fit."

Warn­er, FI­FA ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­ber Mo­hamed bin Ham­mam and two Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU) of­fi­cials, Deb­bie Minguell and Ja­son Sylvester, were all is­sued with pro­vi­sion­al sus­pen­sions, pend­ing a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion, which is ex­pect­ed to start in Ju­ly. Warn­er, in his state­ment, vowed to of­fer a vig­or­ous de­fence of him­self and Caribbean of­fi­cials, Deb­bie Minguell and Ja­son Sylvester, who were al­so sus­pend­ed. The ethics pan­el said there was suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to fur­ther in­ves­ti­gate al­le­ga­tions that bin Ham­mam and Warn­er, the CON­CA­CAF pres­i­dent, of­fered US$40,000 bribes to del­e­gates at a Caribbean Foot­ball Union meet­ing, held at the Hy­att ho­tel in Port-of-Spain, on May 10-11.

The pay­ments were al­leged­ly made to se­cure votes for bin Ham­mam, a Qatari who heads Asia's foot­ball con­fed­er­a­tion, in his cam­paign to un­seat Blat­ter. The ev­i­dence was com­piled by Amer­i­can ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­ber Chuck Blaz­er, who serves as CON­CA­CAF gen­er­al sec­re­tary and trea­sur­er.

Blaz­er's al­le­ga­tions against Warn­er ap­peared to find sup­port in an e-mail sent by Puer­to Ri­co's Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion to FI­FA gen­er­al sec­re­tary, Jerome Val­cke, yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, dur­ing the Ethics Com­mit­tee news con­fer­ence. In the e-mail, the Puer­to Ri­can of­fi­cials said they were giv­en US$40,000.

"We would bring back the mon­ey to FI­FA with a check, which would be part of the ev­i­dence to be pre­sent­ed to the Ethics Com­mit­tee." FI­FA said bin Ham­mam and Warn­er, who serves as the Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter and has act­ed as Prime Min­is­ter, will now face a full FI­FA in­quiry. If found guilty, they could be ex­pelled from FI­FA and banned for life from all foot­ball ac­tiv­i­ty. Bin Ham­mam said the sus­pen­sion was "un­for­tu­nate but this is where we are-this is FI­FA." Bin Ham­mam, who de­nied any wrong­do­ing, had asked the ethics pan­el to in­ves­ti­gate Blat­ter on grounds that he knew of al­leged bribe at­tempts and did noth­ing about it.

But Damaseb said the five-man pan­el re­ceived "lots of con­fir­ma­tion from every in­di­vid­ual con­ceiv­able" that there was no ev­i­dence to take ac­tion against Blat­ter, who had been in of­fice since 1998. Warn­er called his sus­pen­sion an abuse of the process, in a state­ment is­sued af­ter the de­ci­sion was hand­ed down by the FI­FA Ethics Com­mit­tee. "I in­tend to say a lot more on this mat­ter short­ly," he said. "In the mean­time, I will vig­or­ous­ly de­fend my rep­u­ta­tion as well as the rep­u­ta­tion of the rest of the Caribbean mem­bers." Warn­er ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment with the way the in­quiry was car­ried out. He said he was giv­en less than 24 hours to sub­mit a state­ment for con­sid­er­a­tion by the five-mem­ber com­mit­tee.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said, a mem­ber from Uruguay did not have the val­ue of a trans­lat­ed ver­sion of his or bin Ham­mam's sub­mis­sion. "This lack of trans­la­tion ser­vices brings in­to ques­tion the is­sue of due process," he said. "In ad­di­tion, FI­FA did not have the cour­tesy to pro­vide me with copies of the al­le­ga­tions be­fore the hear­ing and on­ly dur­ing the hear­ing were the al­le­ga­tions read to me." Warn­er, a 28-year vet­er­an at FI­FA's high ta­ble, has main­tained his in­no­cence in the face of the com­mit­tee rul­ing that there was a case to be an­swered. He al­leged, in his state­ment, that the com­plaints made against him were po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed and "de­signed, among oth­er things, to cause se­ri­ous prej­u­dice and dam­age to both Mr bin Ham­mam and my­self at one of the most crit­i­cal times for the FI­FA."

The side­lined FI­FA vice-pres­i­dent said he was al­so shocked and sur­prised that he had to learn about his sus­pen­sion through the me­dia, es­pe­cial­ly hav­ing specif­i­cal­ly re­quest­ed, af­ter leav­ing the Ethics Com­mit­tee hear­ing, that he be no­ti­fied of the body's de­ci­sion. Warn­er has warned that a "foot­ball tsuna­mi" would be un­leashed af­ter the find­ings of the FI­FA pan­el were re­leased.